I want to leave
I want to go
I do not want to stay
in the noise
in the crunch
in the bang
in the whirr
in the idling
in the beeping
in the blathering
in the you didn’t
in the you should’ve
in the crime
in the drip
of blood or ketchup
on the nice wooden floor

I want to leave
please don’t make me
stay here
anymore
I want to quit
please don’t make me
run around
like a lap dog
sniffing and yapping
to belong
in a pack
that doesn’t need me
nor even itself
a pack de trop
a pack of lies

I want to get out of here
I want to flee the scene
And the evil hasn’t even blossomed yet
Still I can’t take it
I want to disappear
I want to never have been
Somehow it has all been a terrible mistake
I am so sick
of the noise
of the hassles
of the pointless tasks that must be done with great care
of the back and forth beneath untrue premises
of the useless discussions that wind through your day and spit our your soul
let me disappear
let me erase my past and my future
let me dissolve and be no more
for this is boring
and evil is catching
evil is spreading
from Donald Trump’s impulse to Donald Trump’s actions to Mike Johnson’s heart to the soul of a nation
Do you catch the disease in time?
Too busy belly aching to bother?
OK, up to you, I’ve seen bigger beasts fall, seen great mammoths crash with tumbling trippling thuds onto the long grasses and hard earth, even seen their great heads twist in unnatural ways, their floppy trunks flail out at weird, unlikely angles to drape over the sharp sturdy but relenting blades.
I don’t care.
Just let me never have been.
Let me never have walked through a movie house with bright colors carpet and bright colors walls and the smell of popcorn and a million years of human sweat wormed deep into forever-damp thick soft garish loud swirling-reds-yellows-purples carpeting.
Let me never have gone to see Ghostbusters with my father, let me never have walked past the Return of the Jedi still playing deep within the dark, the blue and red ray gun blasts the great trees falling in upon great metal boxes on long legs walking and shooting.
Oh, Ghostbusters was released in the summer of 1984 and the Return of the Jedi in the summer of 1983.
So
But I did see the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man explode all over 55 Central Park West in the cinema, with my dad when he was young and the US would always be the land of the free, didn’t I?
The land of the free!
Yeah, and that’s a lucky break.
The home of the brave?
People are just people, and only the evil tells them they are more special than other people.
Isn’t being the children of God good enough for you?
And what kind of a God only cares about some of His children?
I ask you.
Whatever, if I could escape you, I would.
You’ve worn me through.
And this on top of the nothing that I have anyways become.
Let me leave; let me disappear; let turn into the wind and the shriek of the gull floating thereon, and the curl of the wave drifting thereunder, and let me be no more this disappointment amidst and exchanging insults with other disappointments.
Let this end now.
Not another day.
Not another step out there into the pointless parade, miming life, pretending to believe in bodies minds hearts and hands, while knowing full well that nothing is going on except the wind flipping the leaves over to show their light green underbellies over the sun-brightened sidewalk.
I don’t want to do this anymore.
I don’t.
I can’t seem to make myself.
Please.
It is beyond boring
It is stressful and has nothing to do with anything I ever thought I needed to do
Meanwhile a certain cloak, a cloak of loneliness and frustration worn too tightly now for too long does a splendid job of imploding this structure, of twisting and popping the metal supports so that they whine moan and cry out with a tremendous ping. Whatever, there are much worse fates, even supposing the coup goes forward as planned and we become another pile of forbidden words and outlawed thoughts; but I have lost the taste for this game and I have lost my faith in this project and I have lost